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Because beauty should be fun!

My Favourite Scents!

Perfume is one of my many beauty obsessions. I’d collect hundreds of them if I could! I love how scents can trigger feelings and memories, all with a spritz. Just the smell of a Cool Charm body spray takes me back to primary school, back when we wore tattoo choker necklaces and layered up with armfuls of jelly bangles. Christina Aguilera’s perfume reminds me of when I was 17, sneaking into clubs with a fake ID and my best girl friends. I don’t think they make it anymore, but I have an empty pot of The Body Shop’s Guarana Lip Butter, and the smell of the container takes me straight back to 2008! And I vivdly remember being so worried about my fifth form exams that I studied with peppermint oil dabbed on my wrists, and took a vial of the stuff into my exams in an effort to jog my memory (of course in the end I did fine).

I’ve got lots of perfumes. Generally I lean toward floral scents, but I also like perfumes with a twist, ones with something unusual in them that set them apart from the pack. I have three favourites, and each is quite different from the others. But I’d better stop reminiscing and let the perfumes speak for themselves. Here are my top three…

#1. Jean Paul Gaultier: Ma Dame

This perfume is sadly discontinued (aaargh!) but you can pick up bottles of it pretty easily. My Farmers still stocks it. It is my absolute favourite scent of all time, and I’m yet to find anything that is similar. I’ll be honest and admit that it was the advert with Agyness Deyn chopping off a long platnium wig and hacking at her pants with scissors that attracted me at first: I was going through a major Agyness Deyn crush at the time and had already plastered my bedroom walls with her face before I had even got a whiff of the perfume…

But the perfume itself is glorious too. It’s a fizzy, neon, loud and proud scent which reminds me of a pink highlighter mixed with mandarin and sorbet. It’s so bright, so sexily unusual, that I feel like a better version of myself when I wear it. The top note is the most noticeable, of course, being a bright splash of orange (mandarin to my nose). But it’s the middle and bottom notes that draw me in: the middle notes are rose and grenadine, and the bottom notes are musk and cedar. This is a hit and miss scent for a lot of people, but I get lots of compliments when I wear it, so it must go well with my skin chemistry. It’s very strong, though, so beware of over-spraying! I wore it almost exclusively in my first year at university, and it still reminds my partner of that year when I wear it.

The bottle is gorgeous as well, which is a rectangle with a woman’s figure set in relief, which is a play on Gaultier’s Classique perfumes bottle. The glass has a hint of pink in it, which gives the bottle an ombre effect. I have a couple of the empties scattered around my house as decoration! My only issue is that it sprays a lot of perfume out, which means that even with frugal use the bottle runs out quickly.

#2. Prada: Candy

Of course I love this one! If I had to describe Candy in one word, it would be sugar. It’s the type of scent that I always wanted when I was a teenager, because then, and only then, would I finally be mature. I lusted after it for many years but never worked up the courage to buy it, as it’s pretty darn expensive. When I finally got it: phwoar! I’ll never be without it again.

Scent-wise, this isn’t to everyone’s taste. If you’re into light, fresh scents, then this will assault your nostrils in the worst possible way. But to me it’s absolutely delicious: the top note is white musk, the middle is benzoin, and the bottom is chewy, glorious caramel. It’s full, it’s sexy, it’s sweet without being cloying. Some people have complained that it doesn’t last long, but for me it lasts for a good number of hours before it tails off. It doesn’t turn powdery like a lot of perfumes, which I put down to the caramel base note and my skin chemistry.

The bottle is the only downside to this perfume. It’s in a yellow/gold bottle with a pink label and a black and gold umbrella cap. Personally, I think it’s quite old-fashioned and unattractive. It doesn’t scream ‘luxury’ to me. It gives out just the right amount of perfume per use, which is handy, considering how pricey it is.

#3: Marc Jacobs: Daisy

This is just such a bright, fresh scent! It screams summer to me, in the most simple and pretty way possible. It’s light and gleeful without being immature. I have to say that I was seduced by the bottle originally, as I normally wouldn’t go for something called Daisy, but I’m happy that I did try it. It’s proof that sometimes judging a book by its cover can work in your favour!

Daisy, despite its name, doesn’t smell like daisies. It belongs in the floral-wood category, which is why it is set slightly apart from standard, run of the mill floral fragrances. The top notes are fruity, with strawberry, violet leaf, and grapefruit taking the lead, giving the first burst of the perfume its bright, sunny signature. The middle notes are the floral superstars, with gardenia, jasmine, and violet blended to make a sheer and balanced scent. The bottom notes of vanilla, musk, and white woods are delicate but strong enough to give the perfume depth. My only gripe with this perfume is that it doesn’t last long on me. At most, I get two or three hours worth of wear before it disappears. This would usually be enough to knock a perfume right off my favourites list, but I love it so much that I can put up with its limited life span.

Whoever designed the bottle for this perfume is an artistic genius. It’s simple, it’s pretty, and it matches the perfume perfectly. The plastic daisies at the top are gorgeous, while the pale yellow of the bottle echoes the yellow of the flower. I haven’t used my bottle up yet, but you can be sure that I’ll be displaying this one! On a side note, don’t you hate how you have to keep perfumes in the dark? I keep mine in my wardrobe to make the perfumes last as long as they can, but all I want to do is display them in a gorgeous glass cake stand, something like this picture from Uptown Fashion Magazine:

*Dreamy sigh*

I have a lot more perfumes that I love, but I seem to have a bad habit of falling in love with ones that get discontinued, like DKNY’s Red Delicious. I love that perfume like a mother loves her child! I also have to confess a weakness for cheap and cheerful perfumes, like those from Mariah Carey and Britney Spears’ lines. They’re not as good as the higher end, luxurious perfumes, not by a long shot, but my nose isn’t so refined that it can’t enjoy a good burst of synthetic fizz from time to time. 😛

What are your favourite perfumes? Did you agree with any on my list? Let me know in the comments!